“I’m sure you remember where I keep the real liquor.” Trev eyed her with concern.
“Later.” Bram folded his long frame onto the chaise across from the one where Georgie had been sitting. The sand clinging to his calves sparkled like tiny diamonds. The breeze frolicked in his crisp golden-bronze hair. Her stomach twisted. A beautiful debauched angel.
The image had come from an essay written by a well-known television critic not long after the debacle that had ended one of the most successful television shows in history. She still remembered.
We can imagine Bram Shepard in heaven, his face so perfect the other angels can’t bring themselves to cast him out even though he’s drunk up all the sacred wine, seduced the pretty virgin angels, and stolen a harp to replace the one he gambled away in a celestial poker game. We watch him endanger the entire flock by flying too close to the sun, then plunging too recklessly toward the sea. But the angel community is mesmerized by the fields of lavender in his eyes, the rays of sun weaving through his hair, so they forgive him his transgressions…until his last dangerous plunge drives them all into the muck.
Bram rested his head on the back of the chaise, a position that outlined his still-flawless profile against the sky. At thirty-three, the softer edges of his pleasure-seeking youth had hardened, making his lazy, glittering beauty even more destructive. Bronze threaded his blond hair, cynicism tainted his choirboy’s lavender eyes, and mockery lurked at the corners of his perfectly symmetrical mouth.
The fact that someone so utterly without scruples had overheard her conversation with Trevor made her ill. She couldn’t flee, not yet, but her legs were giving out. “Why are you here?” She sank into one of the tulip chairs.
“I started to tell you,” Trev said. “Bram sometimes uses my other house down the beach, the one I’m trying to sell. Since he’s made himself unemployable, he doesn’t have anything better to do than laze around and bother me.”
“I’m not exactly unemployable.” Bram crossed his sandy ankles. Even the arches of his feet were as gracefully curved as the blade of a scimitar. “Just last week I got an offer to humiliate myself on a new reality TV show. If I hadn’t been stoned when the call came in, I’d probably have accepted. Just as well.” He waved an elegant hand. “Too much work.”
“Point made,” Trev said.
She frantically scanned the sand for photographers. This was a private beach, but the press would do anything to get a photo of her with Bram again. Skip and Scooter publicly reunited after all this time. Her stomach churned at the thought of someone as predictably evil as Bram Shepard becoming part of her public nightmare.
He leaned back and closed his eyes again. He looked like a bored aristocrat taking in the sun—a deceptive image, since he was a high school dropout who’d been raised on Chicago’s South Side by a deadbeat father. “I hope you hid your razor blades, Trev. Word is that our Scooter has a death wish now that life’s dealt her such a cruel blow. Personally, I think she should celebrate finally getting rid of that moron she married. Jade Gentry must have lost her mind to let herself be taken in by Mr. All-American. Tell me the truth, Scoot. Lance Marks can’t get it up, can he?”
“I see you’re still a perfect gentleman. How reassuring.” She had to escape without looking like she was running away. She made a play of slowly rising from the chair and sauntering over to fetch her sandals. Too late, she realized she couldn’t remember where she’d left them.
He opened his eyes and gave her the lazy, mocking smile that had annihilated so many otherwise sensible women. “I read that the happy couple is back on foreign shores doing more of their well-publicized good work.”
Lance and Jade had spent their honeymoon on a humanitarian trip to Thailand. She’d never forget their press release.“We want to use our celebrity to spotlight Jade’s pet cause, the exploitation of children in the sex industry.”
Georgie didn’t have a pet cause, at least nothing that went beyond writing some generous checks. She looked frantically around for her shoes.
Bram pointed the tip of a lean finger toward the base of the chaise where she’d been sitting earlier. “Their campaign to beef up laws against child-sex tourists is heartwarming. And while they’re battling Congress, I hear you’ve been power shopping at Fred Segal.”
Just like that, her self-control snapped. “I truly hate you.”
“Impossible. Scooter could never hate her beloved Skip. Not after he spent eight years of his life getting her out of those crazy little jams.”
She grabbed the sandals and shoved in one foot.
“Stop it, Bram,” Trev said.
But Bram wasn’t done with her. “Remember when you fell in the lake wearing Mother Scofield’s fur coat? Or what about the time you released that cage of mice at her annual Christmas party?”
If she didn’t react to his baiting, he’d stop.
But Bram had always loved slow torture. “Even on our wedding day, you got into trouble. A good thing we never actually shot that show. I heard I was going to knock you up on our honeymoon. If the network hadn’t pulled the plug, I would have sired a little Skip.”
Her fury erupted. “It wasn’t a little Skip! It was twins! We were supposed to havetwins—a girl and a boy. Obviously, you were too high to remember that small detail.”
“Immaculate conception, I’m sure. Can you imagine Scooter naked and—”
She couldn’t take any more, and she spun toward the house, one shoe on, one in her hand.
“I wouldn’t go, if I were you,” he said lazily. “Ten minutes ago, I spotted a photographer crawling into those shrubs across the road. Someone must have seen your car.”
She was trapped.
He raked her with his eyes, one of his many unpleasant habits. “You haven’t taken up smoking by any chance, have you, Scoot? I need a cigarette, and Trev refuses to keep a carton around for his guests. He’s such a Boy Scout.” Bram arched a flawless eyebrow. “Except for his filthy habits with members of his own sex.”
Trevor tried to ease the tension. “You know I only put up with him because I secretly lust after his buff body. Such a pity he’s straight.”
